1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to printing on a sheet of cloth and, more particularly, to an ink jet printing method for printing information or a pattern on a sheet of cloth using an ink jet printer, and also to a print medium suitable for use in carrying out the printing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, studies have been made with respect to printing methods for ink jet printing that are more suitable for small-lot production of a variety of types of products other than ordinary printing methods such as screen printing and roller printing. Ordinary ink jet printers used in offices or by individuals are designed to print information on sheets of paper or OHP sheets, and cannot be directly used for printing on a variety of types of print mediums such as cloth or the like. Namely, there are a lot of problems to be solved with respect to using the known ink jet printing techniques for printing on media such as sheets of cloth.
In particular, ink jet printing on various types of cloth require use of different types of inks because the optimum structure and type of the colorant varies according to the kind of the cloth. Inks which are used in ordinary office-use or personal ink jet printers are designed to be suitable for printing on paper sheets or OHP transparency sheets. Such inks can be used only for limited types of cloths or pose problems such as reduction in the color density after printing or contamination of the non-printed area of the cloth in the course of water rinsing, which is conducted after printing. Another problem encountered in printing on cloth is that feeding and conveyance of a sheet of cloth in a printing machine is difficult because of a lack of stiffness.
Various proposals have been made to overcome these problems. For instance, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 63-6183 discloses a method in which a sheet of cloth is temporarily adhered on a flat carrier plate which is neither expandable nor shrinkable and which has an adhesive layer, so that the printing is effected on the sheet of cloth while the latter is held by the carrier plate. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2-68372 discloses a method in which a sheet of cloth is adhered to a sheet having an adhesive layer which is formed of a mixture of an adhesive agent and an anti-migration agent, so that the printing is effected on the sheet of cloth stiffened and carried by the carrier sheet. These proposed methods are intended to improve feed and conveyance of the cloth or to suppress irregular bleeding of the ink used in the printing. These proposed methods, however, are still unsatisfactory and further improvements are required.